FEATURES
'60s American culture altered communication
By Nathan Bierma, Special to the Tribune | March 11, 2004
When did the term "rhetoric" become an insult? When did the word cease to mean artfully crafted speech and start to convey scorn, as it does when we hear a campaign speech and mutter, "That's just rhetoric"? The answer is 1965, says John McWhorter in his recent book, "Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care" (Gotham Books, 279 pages, $26). That happened to be the year McWhorter was born and the year color television began to...
NEWS
French, American cultures collide in romantic comedy '5 to 7'
Reuters | April 21, 2014
By Patricia Reaney NEW YORK, April 21 (Reuters) - French and American attitudes about food, wine, world events, and love and marriage collide in "5 to 7," a love story set in New York that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. While for Americans 5 to 7 is the typical time when bars offer discounted drinks and food, the French have a decidedly different take on happy hour. In French, "cinq a sept," or five to seven, refers to the time of day...
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ENTERTAINMENT
Essays that illuminate American culture, taste
By Matthew Price. Matthew Price is a New York writer and former staff member of Lingua Franca | December 29, 2002
American Studies By Louis Menand Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 306 pages, $25 In his Heartland and Pulitzer Prize-winning intellectual history, "The Metaphysical Club," Louis Menand explored the formations of modern American thought. With his new book, "American Studies," Menand turns his attention to the varieties of American culture and taste. In a loosely connected set of essays (most of them originally published in The New Yorker, where he is a staff writer,...
FEATURES
Review: 'The Twilight of the American Enlightenment' by George Marsden
By Michael Robbins | February 14, 2014
A strange book. George Marsden, Bancroft Prize-winning author of...